Exam Time
Posted by Stuart at 06:11 PM on September 23, 2003So it's midterm exam time now. Not only do the students dread exams, but the teachers do as well. It's a neccessary evil, I suppose. Before the exam period begins, we are given our proctoring schedule. Mine looks fairly full: I will be proctoring for about 30 hours spread over the next 9 days.
It's not that it is a difficult job, it's just very boring. I always hope that my exams will be made up of essay questions. Since it is difficult to cheat on an essay exam, I don't have to watch the students as closely. That gives me (and the other teachers) a chance to do a little reading or just sit and relax as we watch the students. One time, I even caught one of the other teachers fall asleep in a chair in the back of the room. Oops!
When I watch the students I like to try to look for patterns. What kind of students are Communication Arts majors? Which students from what majors show up on time and are more diligent about the exams? All students wear the same uniform and at first glance, look homogenous. But are there underlying patterns among the demographics of a University classroom in Thailand?
For example, I proctored a Computer Science exam today. I noticed that, just as in America, the computer students don't care as much about appearances: messy hair and untucked unpressed shirts. Unlike America though, almost half of the students were female. This was very surprising to me, since there were hardly ever girls in my university's computer science program.
The Liberal Arts exam in the afternoon was much different. Almost everyone had perfectly coiffed hair with lots of hair gel and were wearing expensive shoes. Also, about 5% of the students taking the exam were kratoey (transgendered) students whereas there were none in the morning exam. I guess computer science is not very popular among the boys who wear skirts to school.
Yeah... it is a bit surprising isn't it? I am not saying that 5% of the Thai population is transgendered (it's not), just 5% of the students in this one humanities class in a private university in Bangkok were.
However, transgenderism (is that a word?) is definitely more accepted here in Thailand than in the US (or any place else I have been, for that matter). Most TV shows have at least one transgendered character, but unfortunately the character is almost always there for "comic relief". The boy in makeup is there for laughs and never gets to have a serious relationship for him/herself, which I think is a shame.
I can talk about sexual identity issues all day, but I'll refrain for now. Thailand is an interesting country. On the one hand, it is very conservative, yet on the other, it is very open and "life and let live." It has been fun for me to try to figure out what is real and what is "just appearances"...
5% of the students are transgendered? Thats an interesting statistic regarding Kratoey. Would you say this is unique to Thailand? Do you have any observations about sexual identity in Thai Culture vs. Western culture?